As the first day of school for both Regina school divisions is coming up on Tuesday, the city of Regina is promising residents all school zones will be properly marked in time for the new school year.

The city says over 90% of school zones are already complete, adding it is a lengthy process to replace about 1,200 signs and inserting signs to mark the end of the school zone.

Spokesperson Faisal Kalim said Regina Christian School and Luther College will not have a 30 km/h school zone.

“The priority with the school zone project is to be consistent. So we want to make sure that drivers are in a school zone, between 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM, they slow down regardless,” Kalim said. “Those particular school zones did not warrant for speed restrictions when we did our engineering analysis.”

Kalim said some school zones are shorter to ensure drivers slow down near the school.

“We want to make sure that motorists do slow down at that critical point and that they don’t get frustrated with driving in the slower zone and end up speeding up near the end of the zone when it may not be warranted.”

Kalim said he doesn’t see any change in the way the city rolled out this plan.

“Without a dramatic increase in staffing, I don’t anticipate being able to do 1,200 signs in the course of a day or a week, just with practical limitations of changing that out on
this scale, this was a requirement that we needed to do.”

Parks are next on the list for city crews according to Kalim. Once the signage is complete for school zones, crews will begin installing new 30km/h signage for parks.